A Critical Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On Yushu Earthquake In The New York Times

In our age of information explosion, people can obtain information in various ways, of which reading newspapers is still an important one, however. Although objectivity is required in news reports on principle, ideologies that news reporters belong to may have an influence on the choice of language in the course of news reports so that they are very likely to adopt certain linguistic strategies to embody their own attitude with a view to affecting and manipulating readers or audiences. The aim of CDA is to make the hidden relationship between discourses and society transparent, which is the ideal framework of this paper.This thesis draws on Fairclough (1995)'s three-dimensional model as the theoretical framework and Martin's Appraisal Theory as the analytical tool in terms of seven sample news reports on Yushu earthquake that are from New York Times (the U. S.A.) in LexisNexis Academic that is a foreign database. It is by means of the bridge of discourse practice between text and social practice that text analysis can explore ideological meanings of discourse to the full.The analysis results show that New York Times indeed takes a negative attitude towards the Chinese government and the tendency of ideology is hidden by way of employing"attitude"resources and"engagement"resources, which turns out that the alleged objectivity and neutrality of New York Times are not the case.The real value of this thesis on the one hand lies in revealing the prejudice of New York Times against China in terms of Yushu earthquake and on the other hand, consists in enhancing readers'critical awareness and developing the capability of independent judgment of news reports.